and GT what's good about the Alexander Revisited, you're talking about the Stone flick right? I never bothered with the 'revisited.'
Starting out, I disliked the original because the story was chronological. Stone had a lot of complex personal issues to get across in his film, but making the story chronological made the film feel like a classical story. Most filmmakers like to play with the myth of historical figures so they simplify the story to get across their heroic statures. All Stone could do in his theatrical cut is allude to deeper subject matter.
Stone plays with myth, but his update of Alexander is meant also to combat myth. The duality in the film is between realism and myth. What Stone changed with his "Final" or "Revisited" cut is that he made the plot circular around the themes of the film. Instead of starting at Alexander's beginning of life, it started out at the beginning of his greatest battle victory. Then the plot circled around all of his life, arranging the scenes of his life in accordance to the themes in the film. The finale is still his death, but because the story is gaged by Alexander's emotional life, the finale feels even more like madness achieved. Stone gets even crazier with the imagery to really make it feel like a climactic end.
Also, there is a lot more story to the story. The themes are much more fleshed out. It helps in that basic way, but it also helps Colin Farrell's performance. I didn't like his performance in the original because it seemed imitative of other performances of historical figures. The theatrical cut forced Farrell to center the majority of his performance around things that a classically trained actor could exude in. Farrell has little of a theater career so he was a duck out of water because his diction isn't very eloquent, but the Final Cut allows Farrell to be Alexander on a host of different levels. Farrell's best dramatic talent is his ability to hoist a macho sensibility, but be able to contrast it with a sensitive and vulnerable side. The Final Cut plays on more scenes like that. It shows quieter scenes that allow Farrell to dig at Alexander. It makes the original scenes in the theatrical cut look better and more believable because this portrait of Alexander himself is much bigger.
